Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

Elijah threw his arms out wide, saying, “Good to see you!”

Ron, who’d just arrived at Mama Lou’s gave him a tight smile, accepting the hug like the old friend he was. The embrace was short and included a lot of masculine back-patting before they broke apart. “How long are you in town?” Ron asked.

Gesturing toward his favorite booth, Elijah answered, “A few days at most. I need to get moving soon.”

As they settled in across from one another, Elijah studied his friend’s face. The Healer seemed healthy enough, but worry lines had sprouted from both his forehead and around his eyes. But a Primal Realm, even one that was regularly drained of power, would do that to a man.

“How have you been?” Elijah asked after the server took their orders.

“Recovering.”

“That bad?”

Ron shook his head. “I don’t know how you did that alone,” he admitted. Carmen had expressed similar thoughts. “Keeping everyone alive was like playing whack-a-mole. I’d heal one person, and the next was already on the verge of giving in. Mind you, that was with a whole team of other Healers.”

“Most of them had never seen combat, though,” Elijah guessed.

Ron let out a sigh. “We tend to neglect that, don’t we? Or underestimate it, I guess,” he said. “We see these miraculous abilities and think we’re invincible. Or that it’s going to be easy. The reality is that it’s just like anything else. Experience – and not the kind that gives you levels – doesn’t always equate to skill, but skill doesn’t come without vast amounts of experience. They were too green to be thrown into that kind of situation.”

Elijah nodded along. If he’d had a say, he might have pointed that out before they’d entered the Chimeric Forge. But he’d been elsewhere, and the situation dictated that they needed powerful Healers. If the process of creating those Healers meant that they lost a couple along the way, it was an acceptable loss.

Because they were running out of time.

Day by day. Hour by hour. The deadline of the excisement loomed over them like the specter of their death. And if it hadn’t been for Elijah’s efforts, they would’ve stood no chance of rising to that occasion.

Or maybe they would have. After all, if he hadn’t been around, someone else would have gotten the top spot in the Trial of Primacy. Someone else would have reaped those rewards. And more importantly, the other factions wouldn’t have him as a lightning rod for conflict.

Elijah wished he could lie to himself. He desperately wanted to believe that undermining Seattle had been for the greater good. But the reality was that he knew good and well that wasn’t true. If he’d just stayed out of it, Seattle would have been in a better position. And that, in turn, would have let them take the lead with the Primal Realms.

Instead, Elijah had cut them off at the knees, embarrassing them at multiple turns. It was no wonder someone there – probably Isaiah, regardless of the other possibilities – had ordered his death.

He shook his head, then turned the conversation towards Hope and her future in the grove. Ron was very happy with his daughter’s progress. Her leveling speed was glacial, but that was mostly because non-combatants tended to move at a more sedate pace. She also lacked the drive that allowed most Tradesmen to keep up with their more action-oriented peers.

“Most people can’t be Carmen,” Ron stated. “That woman is insane. You know that, don’t you?”

Elijah shrugged. “Guess it runs in the family.”

“Genetics don’t pass to in-laws.”

Elijah chuckled. “My sister had a type,” he said. “She would’ve never married anything but a high-achiever. She just wasn’t built to accept mediocrity from anyone around her.” Then, Elijah hastily added, “Not that Hope is mediocre. She’s not. She’s just…”

“No, I get what you’re saying. Some people are just insane. Like your entire family. You included, just in case that wasn’t clear.”

“Yeah, no – very clear. I’m crazy. I accepted that a long time ago,” Elijah admitted. He never could have gotten to his current level of power if he was entirely sane. He knew that as well as anyone.

After that, the pair reminisced about their shared experiences and talked about the future. Ron seemed convinced that Hope and Miguel were on the fast-track to marriage, but Elijah wasn’t so certain. He remembered what young love had felt like, and he knew just how quickly it could all fall apart. The reality was that, even if those two were infatuated with one another, neither of them were fully developed adults. So even if they did everything right, there was a good chance that they’d simply drift apart as they matured in different directions.

Or maybe it was true love meant to last.

There really was no telling.

In any case, their food soon arrived, and Elijah enjoyed a dish of hashbrowns, a variety of peppers and onions, and some sort of salty mystery meat. It reminded him of his father’s favorite breakfast, which consisted of potatoes fried with Spam and cheese and drenched in ketchup.

In this instance, there was no ketchup, but the meal shared a similar soul with his father’s cooking.

Over the course of the meal, Elijah and Ron caught up. Most of their conversation centered on the mundane, but Ron did reveal that he intended to head down to the Hollow Depths sooner rather than later. He’d been scheduled to leave with Kurik, Miguel, and the other elites, but he’d stayed behind to escort a fresh batch of troops.

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“They really are committed to this, aren’t they?” Elijah asked. The original number of soldiers had settled around five thousand. Once the latest wave joined the main group, that number would swell to nearly four times that. Most of them had come from the guilds, but Ironshore and Argos had come through with far more support than anyone could have expected.

In Ironshore’s case, most of those were support personnel like Tradesmen and Scholars – a necessity for any successful endeavor, but they were sending a few combatants as well. Meanwhile, Argos was sending a few dozen Healers, most of whom had trained at the Temple of Virtue.

“It’s almost like the fate of the world is at stake,” Ron remarked sarcastically before eating a spoonful of oatmeal. Elijah had already criticized the man’s taste in breakfast foods. In his experience, the first meal of the day was meant to be filled with fat and grease. Anything else bordered on sacrilege.

“Fair.”

Once their meal was finished, Ron stuck around for a while before he left to attend a logistics meeting. It wouldn’t be long before he and the others set off.

Before he left, Elijah gripped his shoulder and said, “Be careful. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t plan on doing anything you would do, either,” Ron joked. He knew better than most just the sorts of insanity Elijah usually got up to.

Once Ron was gone, Elijah settled down to enjoy a cup of coffee before he went about his day. He needed to get a few errands out of the way before he made a decision on his next step. He knew which way he was leaning, but the problem was that his instincts stood in stark contrast to the most logical path.

So, almost as much to procrastinate the decision as because they needed to be done, Elijah set out to take care of a few unrelated tasks. The first stop was Elijah’s Fine Soaps, which was busier than he’d expected it to be. It was nice to see that the people of Ironshore were taking advantage of the opportunity, but he did worry that his store of soap would run out much more quickly than he’d anticipated.

The attendant – Milo – had been forced to hire a couple of others to help him manage the load.

He was also quite distraught, because some of the inventory had come up missing.

“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” he said between tending to customers. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll hunt the thief down.”

Elijah chose to trust him to do just that. He spent a few minutes asking about how things were going, and he was happy to find that the profits were even higher than anticipated. Thankfully, Elijah didn’t have to tend to any of that. Atticus took care of everything for him, even going so far as depositing the profits in his Branch account.

After satisfying his curiosity about the soap business, Elijah headed to the Branch, where he found three messages. The first was from Sadie, and it detailed their intended path through the Hollow Depths. She reassured him that he wasn’t needed, but she also wanted him to know where they would be if something bad happened.

The second came from Lamar, who reaffirmed that Vinny – his rival in Philadelphia – had all but disappeared. He’d taken quite a few of his most powerful lieutenants as well. For his part, Lamar saw it as an opportunity – not to take that territory, but to participate in the troll Primal Realm. But he wouldn’t do so without Elijah’s approval.

Not wanting to step on anyone’s toes, Elijah returned his message with one of his own. He didn’t presume to tell Lamar what to do. The man could manage his own affairs. However, he did point out that he wasn’t the one in charge of any of that, so he referred Lamar to the appropriate people.

It probably wasn’t what Lamar wanted, but it was all Elijah could offer.

Finally, he received a message from Gunnar, detailing his ongoing investigation. The man was far more thorough than Elijah had expected, and his message read like a military after-action report. All the relevant details, with no fluff. He’d yet to track his target down, but given his skillset, Elijah expected him to figure things out.

He did confirm that Seattle had already mobilized to confront the Primal Realm they’d found, but despite early successes, they had experienced significant setbacks. From what Gunnar described, their forces had yet to even reach the entrance. The only reason they knew about it at all was because of Isaiah’s drones.

Given that it was rumored to be the dragon Primal Realm, Elijah expected it to take quite a while for them to reach the entrance. On top of that, it seemed that it was located a significant distance from the closest settlement.

According to everything Gunnar had uncovered, it would be a while before they could challenge it.

That just highlighted Elijah’s dilemma. On the one hand, he’d promised Benedict he would help with the Labyrinth of Dead Gods, but on the other, Elijah felt an undeniable pull dragging him toward the dragon Primal Realm. It was almost offensive, thinking about someone else conquering it.

Even when Elijah returned to the grove, he’d yet to make a decision, which frustrated him to no end. Thankfully, Nara was there waiting on him, and she was obviously excited. So, he followed her to one of the beaches, only to discover something surprising.

“You got it to take hold.”

She nodded. “Getting the leviathan’s bones to grow wasn’t difficult,” she revealed. Elijah knew she’d salvaged a polyp and nursed it to health, but he hadn’t expected it to take hold so quickly. “Making it tolerate the coral from home was much more frustrating. Now that they’re growing together, they should make one another stronger.”

Elijah waded into the water and ducked his head beneath the waves. The two types of coral had become intertwined. In nature, that never would have happened – one would have choked the other out – but it seemed that Nara’s influence had overcome that aspect of nature.

He could sense the vitality and ethera wafting off of them, and in waves that sent ripples through the local area.

When he stood to his full height, he was grinning. “This is amazing.”

He was tempted to remind her to guard it well, but if anyone understood the necessity of protecting such a treasure, it was her. So, he kept that reminder to himself, and instead, asked, “Can I run something by you? It occurs to me that I don’t really have anyone else to talk to.”

That was true. Most of his friends were gone. Everyone else was busy preparing to head down to the Hollow Depths, and Nerthus only really understood matters of the grove. With everything else, his immaturity had a way of showing itself. He usually gave solid advice, but he had difficulty with nuance.

Maybe Nara could fill the gap.

So, he explained his dilemma. She flinched when he spoke of dragons, but she looked almost as anxious when he spoke of djinn. It was confirmation that most people didn’t deal so casually with elder races.

Finally, he asked the question at the forefront of his mind. “Which one do I target?” he asked. “What would you do?”

To her credit, Nara didn’t hesitate. “You are a dragon,” she said. “The associated Primal Realm is yours by right. You must not allow anyone else to conquer it.”

Then, she went on to explain that it wasn’t just about rights. There was a very real chance that whoever went into that Primal Realm would learn more about how to defeat him. It wasn’t likely. Things like bane weapons weren’t common. But it wasn’t out of the question, either, and if ever there was a chance for it to spit out such a reward, it would be the first clear.

That made the choice for him.

“I guess I’m going to what’s left of Australia, then.”